


The Literal Elephant

by merriman



Category: The Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: Anxiety, Family Issues, Gen, High School, Shop Class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Brian post-detention is maybe a little braver than Brian before.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elf (Elfwreck)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/gifts).



> I wish I'd had time to do more with this. Perhaps I will return to it post-Yuletide!

Brian didn't sleep much the night after his first (and only, please) all day detention. He'd written the essay, sure. He'd done what he was supposed to do. Mostly. He'd sat down and written it and he was pretty pleased with the end product. But there was something that nagged at him late into the night, well after another lecture from his parents and some studying to make up for a day spent doing pretty much nothing. Would he get in trouble? Much of Brian's life thus far had been dictated by a distinct desire to Not Get In Trouble. Study hard, get good grades, join the clubs that look good on college apps, don't hang out with bad influences, etc. etc. etc. Just the one detention probably wouldn't ruin his chances with MIT or Harvard or CalTech, but it was still there in the back of his head as he stared at the walls of his room in the dark: Would he get in trouble?

Lying there at three in the morning, Brian made a list:

  * The assignment had been for each of them to write an essay. In effect, wasn't it plagiarism for the others to take credit for work he'd done alone?
  * The assignment had been for the essay to explain who they thought they were. Which, yeah, he'd sort of done that? Except he'd side-stepped the question by turning it around on Mr. Vernon.
  * For that matter, turning it around on Mr. Vernon was pretty much guaranteed to piss him off no matter what.
  * That essay was, in no possible interpretation, 1000 words. It had been 100 words, counting the "Dear Mr. Vernon" at the beginning and the "Sincerely, The Breakfast Club" at the end.
  * It was glib and too short and didn't answer the question and was, when you thought about it, outright rude to an authority figure.



Oh yeah. He was going to be in trouble. He was going to be in a lot of trouble.

Except then he wasn't. At school on Monday, Brian waited all day long to be called to the Vice Principal's office. Or even the Principal. The school counselor. Anyone. But no one said a word about it. He passed Claire in the hallway outside the cafeteria at lunchtime and she looked him in the eye. He saw Andrew alone, staring into the display case full of school trophies. When Andrew saw him reflected in the glass, he turned and nodded to Brian. Bender actually clapped him on the back as he passed by him near the shop classroom. Brian turned to look at him and Bender was smirking back at him over his shoulder. 

Allison actually came up to him after school. Brian was in the shop classroom, new ceramic elephant on the workbench in front of him.

"Hey," she said, keeping her distance, maybe in case the elephant was rigged with explosives, which was a thought.

"Hey," he said back. "Um. Did anyone talk to you today? I mean, about Saturday?"

Allison shook her head. "No. No one ever talks to me."

"I mean, because of the essay," Brian clarified. "I figured someone might hassle us because we didn't do what Vernon asked."

Allison hadn't kept Claire's makeover. Well, she had her hair pinned back a little, but she was still all in black, eyeliner heavy as always, stuffed-to-bursting bag slung over her shoulder. Brian wondered if Andrew had even looked her way all day, but before he could ask, there was Andrew in the doorway.

"No one hassled me," Allison said. She looked at Andrew, who shrugged. 

"Me neither. Figured Vernon might say something to my coach, but nope."

Brian nodded and they all just stood there awkwardly, not staring at each other. Brian, for his part, stared mostly at the elephant. It was a literal elephant in the room. The absurdity of it was kind of overwhelming. 

"Don't sweat it," Andrew said to him. "I mean, it was a good essay and a shit assignment. Who the hell does he think he is, anyhow, giving us an essay to write in detention? Don't worry so much, Johnson."

But Brian couldn't help but worry. He'd written the damn thing. He still had a fucking ceramic elephant lamp to make. He had a dip in his grades and a discipline mark on his record and once a week meetings with the school counselor about the flare gun and his feelings. How was he not supposed to worry?

The next day, Brian sucked up his pride and went to the shop teacher, Mr. Dealy, and asked him for help with the elephant lamp. Mr. Dealy told him he'd let him make up the project over winter break if he assisted one of the other students. And of course, it was Bender.

"Fuck. If you're my assistant, we're never getting this done," Bender muttered when he saw Brian after school. Brian had run from his Physics Club meeting to get to the shop to meet him. 

"Hey, you trusted me with the essay, right?" Brian said. "Just tell me what to do."

Bender gave him an utterly unknowable look, then shrugged and shoved Brian in the direction of a terrifying-looking piece of shop machinery that had been labeled as off limits for beginners.

"So, first? One of the things us idiots who take Shop do is we keep all the equipment running," Bender told him. "So you and me? We're going to fix the radial arm saw so it doesn't try to kill people anymore. Cool?"

Brian stared at him, then nodded. "Yeah, yeah, cool. Not killing people. That's good."

And so the semester trundled on, not even remotely like how Brian had expected it to at the beginning of the year. Sure, he still studied a lot and stayed out of trouble, but he also spent time in the shop helping Bender make the tools safe for idiots like Brian who didn't have a clue how to use them. The day he dropped the Math Club, he also dropped two wrenches and Bender made him stop and sat him down.

"What the fuck is wrong with you today?" he asked, in what was frankly a worrisome level of concern for Bender.

"I dropped the Math Club," Brian told him. "My parents are going to kill me."

Bender stared at him. "You have got to be fucking kidding me," he said. "Your dork parents are not going to kill you for quitting the Math Club."

"Yeah, they will," Brian insisted. "Physics Club, Math Club, if there was a Chemistry Club they'd have wanted me in that one too. Everything at home is all science, all the time. They gave me a molecule model kit for my last birthday."

Bender was still staring at him. "Holy shit. What do you all even do over dinner? Solve for x?"

Brian had to laugh at that because yeah, yeah they did. That was one of his mother's favorite things to do while they ate: Quiz Brian and his sister in math problems. 

Bender shook his head and got back to work on the pipe cutter they'd been overhauling. "Man, my family sucks, but I'd rather eat actual shit than spend a night doing math at dinner. You know what you need to do?"

Brian went back over the tools and placed the wrench he'd dropped in the right place in the drawer it came from. "What?" he asked, handing Bender the ratchet he needed.

"Distract them. I mean, tell them the Math Club sucked, it was all losers making jokes. Which it was, you totally told me that last week. Couldn't shut up about it. So tell them that, then tell them something good. Distract, then redirect. Classic parent evasion move."

Brian nodded. It wasn't bad advice. And the Math Club really had been mostly freshmen making dirty math puns for an hour once a week. He'd leave out the dirty part but tell his parents he'd look into starting an actual Math Olympiad team next year. In the meantime, he actually had a good redirection.

"Yeah, well, maybe they'll be okay with it if I tell them I'm joining Debate."

"You're the biggest dork I've ever met in my life," Bender said from under the pipe cutter. He held out the ratchet and Brian took it. "Why are you joining Debate, of all the dweeb time sucks you could join?"

Brian grinned at him. "I showed them the 'essay' I wrote for Vernon. They liked my style."


End file.
